1967 Dodge Coronet Hardtop - Bronze Beauty

Tens of thousands of '67-vintage Mopars have been modified over the years to make them winners on the race track or the show field, or to show off the owner's tastes and desires. One set of '67s didn't need much modification to begin with: the Dodge Coronet R/Ts.

That year, The Dodge Boys added the R/T series to the Coronet lineup to compete with that three-letter-named car that The General's renegade division introduced a few years earlier. Some say that bunch of mad scientists, racers, and others who made Alfred P. Sloan and his army of bean counters cringe did it because of a Dodge road test that appeared in Motor Trend back in the summer of 1963. The 383 four-barrel/four-speed Polara 500 drop-top that M/T got to play with would've beaten any of The General's four upcoming midsize '64s handily. Dodge did more than add some initials and a scooped hood to a top-line Coronet for 1967. They added the B-Body cop car's heavy-duty suspension, steering, 11-inch drum brakes, and 70-amp alternator, as well as a dual-point distributor (on four-speed-equipped R/Ts), a transmission choice of the standard 727 Torqueflite or the optional 833 four-speed, and a standard engine whose displacement put the midsize muscle competition to shame: the new-for-'67 440 Magnum. With closed-chamber 915 heads and a 750-cfm four-barrel, it was rated at a mere 375 horsepower. Mere only in terms of what the R/T's only optional engine put out.

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While a lot went into the R/T, a lot cameùor stayedùoff, like the chrome body trim that the Coronet 500s wore. All that graced the R/T were the accents around the windows, wheelwells, and rocker panels, and a simple vertical-pattern grille in front that the rear trim matched. Result: a top-line, midsize muscle car whose sticker price started at $3,199 and maxed out around $4,200 if you went the Hemi route.

One way to make the '67 Coronet R/T distinctive was the available MM1 color choice: Turbine Bronze Metallic. First seen on the Chrysler Ghia Turbine Cars in 1963, by 1967 it was in the Dodge color selection, adding class to all three sizes of Engle-era Dodges.

But have you seen an MM1 Coronet R/T lately? If so, did it look as great as Phil Domin's '67?

Phil is a longtime Mopar guy from northeastern Pennsylvania, who still owns his first one, a '66 Plymouth Fury III. But in 2004 he had some bad luck with his big C-Body. "I was at Englishtown Raceway Park for Mopars at Englishtown," he recalls. "I was racing the Fury, and I burned a hole in a piston and blew the engine."

A replacement engine was on Phil's mind when he went to the Mopar Nationals that August, but he found something bigger insteadùthis '67 Coronet R/T advertised for sale. What did Phil do? "I fell in love with the car," he says, and that B-Body went home to his Hazleton, Pennsylvania, garage from the Nats...but not before other showgoers offered him as much as $5,000 more than he paid for it.

From what Phil could determine, the R/T had been sold new in Missouri to a state trooper, and eventually ended up in Indiana, avoiding the ravages of time and the elements along the way. "It was in pretty good overall condition," he says, noting that it had been repainted once in its original MM1 Turbine Bronze Metallic acrylic enamel, while keeping the original black vinyl top. Phil adds, "It's a numbers-match car, with its original drivetrain, and I wanted to keep it that way."

Good idea. With Ma Mopar's finest (for 1967, at least) high-performance stuff already on it, why do anything else to it but keep it original?

That meant having much of the chrome trim-what there is of it-replated, and doing other work to make the car look factory fresh. In all, it took a couple of years to get his car in the shape you see it here. He tells us that he's got another Coronet R/T that's taking much longer. "I have a '69 Coronet R/T that I've been restoring for about 14 years," Phil says. "On that one, I'm doing a complete, rotisserie restoration. I've gone way too far with it already, and that's probably why it's not done. It's almost the exact opposite of my '67 because it was from northeastern Pennsylvania." He adds this about his '69, with a big laugh: "I replaced the framerails on it. I wouldn't wish that onto anybody! I realize now how so many projects get started but never finished."

But his '67 is finished, and it's as good a driver as it is a looker. "The car drives nice," Phil says with a bit of understatement.

It's also a magnet for Mopar folks whenever he shows it. "It amazes me, because people always walk up to the car and ask what the color is, and I say, 'Turbine Bronze.'" Phil adds, "It's a unique car because of that. It pops. It's a neat color and it takes you back."

When he's gone back to the Mopar Nationals with this car, Phil has seen other '67 Coronet R/Ts, but few other MM1 hued rides. "Of the ones that I have seen, none of them are this color," he says. "I've only seen two other '67 R/T hardtops over the years that are this color, and neither one of them had a black vinyl top."

Phil's advice for anyone planning a Mopar project, B-Body or otherwise, is advice you'd expect from someone whose Mopar passion was stoked while living in a harsh climate: "Find the most solid car that you can start with before you get into it."